Markus Eisenhauer

Managing the Iterative Requirements Process in a Multi-national Project Using an Issue Tracker

Todays software development is becoming more and more international. With involved stakeholders being distributed over several remote locations in the world, particularly the management of software requirements becomes complex and difficult to handle. In this paper, we report on a Web-based computer-aided requirements elicitation process that decreases the number of necessary face-to-face meetings and reduces communication overhead. It is thus possible to distribute requirements elicitation efforts to partners or contractors that may be situated anywhere in the world.

Heterogeneous Applications, Tools, and Methodologies in the Car Manufacturing Industry Through an IoT Approach

Due to the growth of industrial Internet services, todays production environment is on the edge of a new era of innovations and changes. This is taking place through the convergence of the global industrial system with the power of advanced computing, analytics, low-cost sensing, and new levels of connectivity enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT). These innovations will bring higher efficiency, flexibility, and interoperability among industries, although they belong to different production ecosystems. This paper describes an IoT platform and the related prototypes developed within the project: Enabling Business-Based Internet of Things and Services (ebbits), with a focus on the industrial domain. Heterogeneous applications were deployed and tested, including a wireless sensor and actuator network for industrial machines monitoring and a radio-frequency-identification-based system for operator management, locating, and authorization, which also includes an interactive user interface for portable devices to visualize real-time information from physical-world devices. Moreover, tools for model-driven development are used to simplify the process of building IoT applications. Those developments are based on IoT middleware that is developed and deployed by the project to enable the seamless integration of heterogeneous technologies and processes into mainstream enterprise systems. This paper also presents the prototypal deployment of the developed prototypes in the car manufacturing industry.

Application development for the Internet of Things: A context-aware mixed criticality systems development platform

Abstract The Internet of Things (IoT) is gaining momentum and may positively influence the automation of energy-efficiency management of smart buildings. However, the development of IoT-enabled applications still takes tremendous efforts due to the lack of proper tools. Many software components have to be developed from scratch, thus requiring huge amounts of effort, as developers must have a deep understanding of the technologies, the new application domain, and the interplay with legacy systems. In this paper we introduce the IMPReSS Systems Development Platform (SDP) that aims at reducing the complexity of developing IoT-enabled applications for supporting sensor data collection in buildings, managing automated system changes according to the context, and real-time prioritization of devices for controlling energy usage. The effectiveness of the SDP for the development of IoT-based context-aware and mixed-criticality applications was assessed by using it in four scenarios involving energy efficiency management in public buildings. Qualitative studies were undertaken with application developers in order to evaluate their perception of five key components of the SDP with regard to usability. The study revealed significant and encouraging results. Further, a quantitative performance analysis explored the scalability limits of the IMPReSS communication components.

Implicit interaction for pro-active assistance in a context-adaptive warehouse application

This paper reports on the implicit interaction evaluation for proactive assistance support of warehousemen developed in the MICA (Multimodal Interaction in Context-Adaptive systems) project. The goal is to evaluate natural human interaction in multimodal systems and the provision of pro-active assistance: we aim to do this by combining explicit and implicit interaction on different modalities reflected in a new layer based architecture for multimodal interaction.

Internet der Dinge — Anwendung von RFID- und Tracking-Technologien zur intelligenten kooperativen Assistenz im Arbeitsprozess

Dieser Beitrag stellt den Menschen in den Mittelpunkt der Betrachtungen. Es geht primar um Anwendungen und Dienste, die RFID-Technologie und andere Trackingverfahren nutzen, um Menschen in ihrem Alltag oder in ihrer beruflichen Umgebung Unterstutzung leisten zu konnen. Solche Dienste kommen dabei weitgehend ohne die explizite Mitwirkung von Menschen aus. Trotzdem dienen sie dem Menschen, der sie verstehen und beherrschen konnen muss. Wir thematisieren in diesem Beitrag den Aspekt des Benutzers, seiner Interaktion, seiner Kontrolle uber das System und der Veranderung der Rolle des Menschen in einem Mensch-Maschine- System.

Prototyping the Internet of Things for the future factory using a SOA-based middleware and reliable WSNs

In this paper, we describe a SOA-based middleware to integrate Internet-of-Things technologies in industrial setups. The middleware allows a seamless horizontal integration among heterogeneous technologies and vertical integration with applications and business systems. Using the middleware, we evaluated an approach to improve the reliability of 6LoWPAN-based sensor networks with self-configuration and self-healing capabilities to support an innovative monitoring and control framework in a manufacturing line. The sensor networks were evaluated in a test bed consisting of various physical devices that emulates a welding station.

MICA: A Mobile Support System for Warehouse Workers

Thousands of small and medium-sized companies world-wide have non-automated warehouses. Picking orders are manually processed by blue-collar workers; however, this process is highly error-prone. There are various kinds of picking errors that can occur, which cause immense costs and aggravate customers. Even experienced workers are not immune to this problem. In turn, this puts a high pressure on the warehouse personnel. In this paper, the authors present a mobile assistance system for warehouse workers that realize the new Interaction-by-Doing principle. MICA unobtrusively navigates the worker through the warehouse and effectively prevents picking errors using RFID. In a pilot project at a medium-sized enterprise the authors evaluate the usability, efficiency, and sales potential of MICA. Findings show that MICA effectively reduces picking times and error rates. Consequentially, job training periods are shortened, while at the same time pressure put on the individual worker is reduced. This leads to lower costs for warehouse operators and an increased customer satisfaction.

Connecting the Internet of Things rapidly through a model driven approach

Currently, developing Internet of Things (IoT) applications requires tremendous efforts and a wide range of expertise. This may discourage inexperienced developers entering the IoT development. Filling this gap, we propose a model driven tool called IoTLink that allows inexperienced developers to wire physical devices visually, creating the necessary foundation for their IoT applications. Based on the visual model, IoTLink is able to generate a complete Java project including an extendable Java code. When the java code is compiled and executed, it encapsulates the complexity of communicating with devices and services. It abstracts them as virtual objects that can be accessed through different communication means that are commonly used on the internet such as web service and MQTT. IoTLink was evaluated against java development in a controlled experiment. The result shows that IoTLink was able to outperform classical java development in terms of the development time and users satisfactions.

Industrial case study of the MICA support system for warehouse workers

Returns caused by the delivery of incorrect items constitute a major problem for non-automated warehouses. Returns not only create extra costs, they also aggravate customers. Most errors in logistics occur during the picking process. MICA --- a mobile assistance system for warehouse workers --- unobtrusively navigates the worker on his way through the warehouse and effectively prevents picking errors using RFID technology. Therefore, MICA reduces error rates, job training periods, and the time required for picking and packing, leading to lower costs for warehouse operators and increased customer satisfaction. In this paper you will read about a case study where the MICA prototype was field-tested in the warehouse of a medium-sized enterprise.

First results from an investigation into the validity of developer reputation derived from wiki articles and source code

The internal quality of software is often neglected by developers for various reasons like time pressure or a general dislike for certain activities. Yet internal quality is important to speed up development and to keep software maintainable. We present a way to use reputation systems to improve the internal quality of software by putting artifacts like wiki articles and source code under their control. Specifically, we show that reputation scores derived from such artifacts reflect actual reputation in the developer community using data from a work group wiki and an open source project.